


The Man on the Bridge: Captain America and Nietzsche

by vulcansmirk



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 19:03:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3179717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulcansmirk/pseuds/vulcansmirk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nietzsche's idea of the "Übermensch" -- literally, "superman" -- as mankind's alleged moral salvation is problematic for a number of reasons. What Nietzsche failed to realize is that it takes two to tango -- and, incidentally, to save the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Man on the Bridge: Captain America and Nietzsche

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in horrendous academic language for a class on science fiction. It used to include an additional discourse on a Theodore Sturgeon novel and actual academic citations, but then I said 'fuck you' to all that, because academia is for weenies. (Weenies like me, apparently.)

Alright, I'll get the obnoxious academic piece out first: in his prologue to  _Thus Spake Zarathustra,_ Nietzsche describes the alleged savior of humanity, the  _Übermensch,_ or "superman," and for contrast/context, he outlines humanity's ultimate downfall,  _der letzte Mensch,_ the last man. The rhetoric of the  _Übermensch_  was famously employed by Hitler to justify the atrocities he and his Nazi armies committed during World War II; it was also, along with Darwinian ideology, some of the inspiration for the eugenics movement in the United States, the aim of which was essentially to control genetics and procreation in order to breed a superior human race. I have to laugh at all the politicians and Oscar-winning movies and whatever else that try to use WWII and the 1940s generally as a way of showcasing American moral superiority over the rest of the world -- the rhetoric of the "Greatest Generation," which Fury complicates so wonderfully in CATWS: "You guys did some nasty stuff." -- because we were into the same ideas the Nazis were into, we just weren't slaughtering people over it. We _were_ forcibly sterilizing people -- for several decades, compulsory sterilization laws mandated that the mentally ill not be allowed to reproduce, so we sterilized the patients of mental institutions. The eugenics movement also victimized people of color and people of lower socioeconomic class; in particular, a number of poor black women were sterilized without notice or consent.

So Nietzsche stirred up quite a ruckus with his _Übermensch_  philosophy, and this is, for better or worse, a lot of the rhetoric that went into the creation of Captain America. Science saves him from himself -- he's the last man, "unfit," his body, as Nietzsche would describe it, "scrawny, scary, starved," but thanks to a little genetic manipulation, he becomes the perfect soldier. Cap was created just prior to US involvement in WWII, and originally his role was as the nation's savior from internal spies and saboteurs (do you smell the Red Scare coming on?). He's been saved from himself, and now he saves America from _it_ self, eradicating all those who are "unfit" and "un-American". It wasn't until 1969, with the benefit of historical hindsight, that he was recast as the free world's first line of defense against Nazi Germany, which is somewhat ironic, given his own ideological origins. He's also cast this way, as I'm sure you've noticed, in the cinematic universe. I would argue, though, that with the MCU iteration of Cap, we're moving away from a more problematic Nietzschean characterization of the Superior Man, and toward something a little more egalitarian, as well as psychologically tenable.

Some basic tenets of Nietzsche's _Übermensch_ include: drive/discontent -- "he is that lightning, he is that madness! ... I tell you: a man must still have chaos within himself in order to give birth to a dancing star"; an internal locus of control, represented chiefly by Nietzsche as a rejection of religion -- "This old saint in his forest has heard nothing yet about  _God_ being  _dead_.... I entreat you, my brothers,  _remain true to the earth_ and do not believe those who hold out supernatural hopes for you"; and a loss of individual identity -- "him who retains not one drop of spirit for himself but wants it all to be virtue's spirit.... him whose soul is overfull, so that he forgets himself."

I think we can all agree that Steve Rogers is driven -- mad, scrappy little Steve couldn't back down if he tried (except when it matters -- i.e. with Bucky. sobs loudly). And while he's been shown (in that horrible, awful, no-good, very bad line of Joss's) to be religious, I think we can also agree that he has an internal locus of control: he sees what needs doing, and he gets it done; he has an impeccable moral compass, which he trusts almost exclusively to guide him forward (but this isn't the same thing as trusting only his own judgment, and I'll get back to that). The next part is something I think about a lot, and I'm not sure everyone would agree that this is true, but in my mind, Steve does disappear into his ideologies: he believes in justice, he believes in freedom, he believes in the greater good, but he's shown again and again that he has a total lack of regard for his own individual well-being. He flew a plane into the Arctic; he almost let Bucky kill him to prove he was still Bucky (though this last, too, complicates Steve as a Nietzschean figure, and I'll come back to that as well). For Steve, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one, and with that in mind, he always, always puts himself last.

Finally, Nietzsche's  _Übermensch_  isolates himself from the rest of humanity -- he's ascended beyond them, he's superior to them, and he separates himself from them because he no longer needs them. Steve himself doesn't do this, but I think his fame does a little bit of this for him. His reputation precedes him, and it creates a schism between the personas of Captain America and Steve Rogers. A small number of people know Steve as Steve, and the rest know only Captain America. Steve is further isolated when Bucky, one of those few who really knew him, dies, and the nail in the coffin (no pun intended??? oh god i'm so sorry) comes when he plunges into the ice and comes out seventy years later, removed from all he knew and all those who knew him.

You may be looking at some of these points -- particularly the last one -- and already poking some holes in Steve as an example of the  _Übermensch._ Well, good, because he isn't one. He's better.

Nietzsche wouldn't think so, of course. The last man, which Nietzsche contrasts with the  _Übermensch,_ appears thus: complacent -- "'We have discovered happiness,' the last men say, and blink"; reliant on others -- "They still love their neighbor and rub up against him: for warmth is needed"; and respectful of personal well-being -- "they revere their health." Notice the change in pronouns here: Nietzsche describes the  _Übermensch_ in the singular, but the last men in the plural. So, where _Übermensch_  is isolated, the last men are interconnected.

This isolation is where MCU-Steve begins to break down as an  _Übermensch_ \-- and, y'know, just in general. We see him in  _Avengers_ beating the life out of a punching bag, with several more lined up for the slaughter, and when he's speaking to Fury, there's that terribly heartbreaking line: "When I went under, the world was at war. I wake up, they say we won. They didn't say what we lost." We know what Steve lost -- everything. And we can see that it's killing him. Suddenly, the superman doesn't look so super. Then, in CATWS, he's fighting with Fury and visiting museum exhibits dedicated to his old life and visiting his only surviving friend from the time, Peggy, and even she's being forced to forget about him. Steve is alone, and in his loneliness, he's lost. Isolation isn't a good thing for him.

This just makes sense. Despite the best efforts of science and politics, Steve isn't a perfect soldier, he's just a good man. He's human, and humans can't survive on their own. We're social creatures. We rely on each other to survive. We are all necessarily last men in that way, because as much as we strive to control our own fates, we depend on the world around us in order to be happy, and anyone who's either been depressed or seen someone who was knows that if we aren't happy, we're immobilized.

Here's Nietzsche's first error: associating happiness with complacency, with a lack of drive, when in fact, psychology and experience tell us quite the opposite. Real, meaningful happiness requires constant upkeep, and for someone like Steve, it comes from a sense of usefulness -- and, on a more personal level, from the simple pleasure of being known by someone else. He was known by Bucky, and he was known by Peggy, and remember what I said about his impeccable moral compass? Well, he relies on both Bucky and Peggy for that. That's two strikes against him, according to Nietzsche. In the 21st century, he latches onto Natasha and Sam, and on them, too, he relies for his moral judgments. Look at Natasha in the car asking after his lack of relationships; look at Sam warning him that Bucky could prove dangerous. He needs the people around him to look after him, the same way he looks after them, and he's always needed that, and he always will. Nietzsche calls this weakness, but I would call it a natural human strength.

Speaking of Bucky, though, let's talk about him. Because of all the people helping Steve, Bucky's been there the longest, and I think he's done Steve the most good. He was there to bail Steve out of all the fistfights he wasn't quite prepared for (and who wants to bet this is how they met?); he was there to make sure Steve got out of the HYDRA base in Azzano alive (he could hardly walk on his own, and he still saved Steve); he was there to watch Steve's back on the battlefields of Europe; and he just knew Steve, knew him like no one else could, knew him through years of anger and inadequacy and resentment and shame, through obscurity and fame, through hating the limitations of his old body and reveling in the possibilities of his new one. Bucky didn't stick around for Captain America, but for "that little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight." He was Steve's strongest link to the world, the bridge Steve could cross to bring him out of his whirlwind ideologies and back into reality. Bucky kept Steve safe, and he kept Steve sane.

The one downside to Steve's relationship with Bucky is that Bucky embodies that final last man trait, reverence for one's health. Bucky's whole mission in life is to protect Steve. He'd like for Steve to be happy, of course (he apparently has a habit of trying to find Steve dates), but barring that, he'll settle for keeping Steve alive, which goal Steve seems determined to thwart. For pre-serum Steve, this constitutes a limitation -- Bucky essentially tells Steve not to follow his heart, not to be the thing Steve knows he has to be, and it's only because he's worried about him, but it holds Steve back. This is why Erskine was so important, and why Peggy was so important, because these were people who saw what Steve could do and built him up -- both physically and mentally -- so he could do it. Again, this contradicts Nietzsche's idea of isolated superiority, but I think there's something to be said for a collective superiority, a collective betterment. We are better when we work together. Steve is a prime example of this. And, though Bucky's mission to keep Steve safe is a hindrance to him pre-serum, post-serum it's exactly what he needs. All his other limitations, his physical disabilities, the obstacles presented by the world's utter lack of faith in him, they've all fallen away. Captain America, after all, can do anything. Bucky becomes the only thing stopping Steve from crossing the line, misjudging his own abilities or falling prey to his lack of self-regard; and, when Bucky's gone, Steve does just that, once again putting the rest of the world ahead of himself. It's only the miracle of his genetically-enhanced body that keeps him from destroying himself along with Schmidt's plane.

Nietzsche has one particular line that I find interesting: "what is great about man is that he is a bridge, not an end." He meant this in a rather condescending way, basically saying that humanity as it is now is just a transition period, that we need to work and cultivate x, y, and z traits in order to make our species better (and you can see the basis for Nazi ideology and the eugenics movement here). But it got me thinking about bridges. Connections between one place and another; easier passage over difficult terrain; conduits built for the exchange of goods and people.

Steve and Bucky literally stand across the bridge from each other three times. In Azzano, it's Bucky yelling at Steve to find a way across, to save his own life as well as the others he's saved; seventy years later, they get into an intense hand-to-hand fight on a bridge in DC, and this is where Steve discovers that Bucky is still alive; in the final climactic showdown in CATWS, Bucky's standing at the end of the bridge on the helicarrier, barring Steve's way (just like old times, eh?), and they face off once more. Each time, it's the  _Übermensch_ facing off against the last man -- but each time, the dynamic is slightly different.

In Azzano, Steve is the  _Übermensch,_ selfless and driven and isolated (read: trapped), and Bucky is the last man, begging Steve to take care of himself, to save himself. On the streets of DC, their roles have almost completely reversed: Steve is still selfless and driven, but he's begun to see that he can't survive in isolation, and so he's let Natasha and Sam into his confidence, and in this way he's cultivating his own personal well-being; Bucky, meanwhile, has had all the self stripped from him, is driven by his mission, and has been so far removed from the world that the world has all but forgotten about him. The Winter Soldier is the ideal  _Übermensch,_ and in him, we see how horrific the reality of the ideal is. In order for a man to be superior in Nietzsche's regard, it seems, he must be entirely destroyed, made into something, ironically, subhuman. And the revelation of the Winter Soldier's identity cinches Steve's departure from the  _Übermensch_ ideal, because now that he knows his best friend is still alive, he has become the last man who reveres individual well-being -- specifically, Bucky's well-being. So when they meet that final time on the helicarrier, Steve is playing the role Bucky always played for him, saving Bucky from himself. Steve is the last man, and Bucky is the gruesome  _Übermensch,_ and when they meet, they start to bleed together: Bucky's lack of self-regard, in the end, comes head-to-head with Steve's, because even if Steve is fighting fiercely for Bucky's health, he still values another's health above his own, so much so that he's willing to die for it, and he almost does; but Bucky's old protective instincts kick in, and he can't quite kill Steve -- ends up, in fact, once again saving Steve from himself. As it turns out, neither would have survived without the other's help.

So, while Nietzsche's desire to improve humanity was admirable, ultimately, he was full of shit. The singular _Übermensch_ doesn't exist; vulnerability is part and parcel of being human, and it is, in fact, our greatest strength. The real superman isn't Steve Rogers, but Steve and Bucky and Peggy and Nat and Sam and all their friends at Avengers Tower. The real victory is when they can work together to decide what's right, and what's worth protecting, and then stand up as a collective and fight for those ideals. The real superman is the person who can accept their own flaws, and allow those around them to lend them a hand. The real hero is all of us, working together to build a better world.


End file.
